


'Til I Forget My Own Name

by orphan_account



Category: Rhett & Link
Genre: Angst, Character Death, Friends to Lovers, Infidelity, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-14
Updated: 2019-09-14
Packaged: 2020-10-18 02:22:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,437
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20631515
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: Link was a listless bystander in his life when it moved forth as he is when—in front of his very eyes—images of it roll out backwards.





	'Til I Forget My Own Name

**Author's Note:**

> _Well I wish we could take every path,_  
_Could spend a hundred years adoring you._  
—Joanna Newsom, “Baby Birch”

They are put back in the wreckage. The car reverses, headlights facing them disappear back to the left. The rain’s pelting up, tiny blades hurled back into the clouds. 

Link wonders how this could be what happens when one dies. It’s laughable—weird—all of their movements are perfectly reversed. Life like a record spun backwards, no where else to go, when all their songs are played out. 

Link’s mind shuts down when he tries to come to grips with it. All he wants is to clue Rhett in to the hysteria, but he’s damned to the silence he’s conditioned himself into. He sits restless, in a body unresponsive. Entrenched in the spitting distance of the man he loves, without being able to reach out and touch.

Not unlike when he was alive.

Maybe after his life’s done reversing in front of his eyes, he’ll face only darkness. But maybe in the dark he’ll see the shape of Rhett, next to him. He can’t make sense of this future past, head obsessively scrambling back to thoughts of something he can make sense of. 

_ They’d been fighting, _ in the car. 

Rhett could have avoided the man doing a slalom along the interstate. 

If he hadn’t been looking at Link. 

If Link had wanted to listen, if for once he’d taken the reins of his own goddamn existence into his hands. 

If he’d responded in turn to Rhett’s sweet words instead of feigning annoyance at them.

If he’d let Rhett heal the cuts of irritability on his face with his hands.

Link had been quiet, figuring Rhett wasn’t allowed to be mad at him. He wasn’t. 

And then he no longer was.

He can’t remember what Rhett had last said to him, now. And it passes before Link has a chance to adjust to his life being upended. Walking backwards to the studio, too soon. Seized with unfathomable dread when he realises looking back at thirty-five years won’t be nearly long enough, if he’s even allowed that much. 

It’s when it’s funniest that it’s the worst, when his body moves calmly about its capsized day while Link sits inside his mind, only thinking forward.   


* * *

It’s incredibly lonesome. For the first time, their souls are moving in different directions. 

His body mirrors Rhett’s, yoked together like they always should be (in work, and not nearly enough leisure). 

Moving in reverse doesn’t take a lot of getting used to, per se. He’s in too much turmoil still to laugh at how the sounds coming out of their mouths are a babble reminiscent of one once learnt in jest, how the memories roll back just as videos do. 

It’s hilarious. The hair on his body, applied back with a razor. He wishes he could show Rhett. 

He tries to block all thoughts out of his mind during coming. Pulling out and in are swapped in a comical way, same as getting in and out of bed, or peeing. Pooping’s a fiercely mortifying ordeal.

The worst part of it is not the upkeep, however—it’s the time he spends doing it. Time he’s wasting not being with Rhett, all for some dumb reason of keeping things separate. He’s buzzing in this futile body, wants to shuck the torpor, wants to bolt out of it and latch onto Rhett with as much force as he can muster. 

It wouldn’t be the most normal thing to take Rhett with him everywhere he goes, but at the least he could live with Rhett. Sit next to him when Link’s wife is cuddled into his side on the couch. She wouldn’t mind if Rhett was buried into Link’s other side—in a way, she must know that he always is. 

Link wouldn’t want to do anything weird with Rhett. 

Except, apparently, hold his hand while on the toilet.

The existence of Hell is thus confirmed to him: feckless when among the living, he’s consigned to a punishment perfectly tailored to his cowardice. But the devil got this one wrong; if Link has to spend a hundred lifetimes only looking at Rhett, he will.

The knowledge doesn’t dull the ache—each time they part upon meeting, Link wants to climb Rhett like a koala and hang around his neck while Rhett takes him anywhere he’s coming back from.

Hilarious. His wings are unsheared. It puts him in a body not only feckless but unmoored, as he unscrolls more and more through accounts of online opinions, eyes sticking mostly to disapproval. _ You could be with him now, you jerk, _ he tells himself, but he doesn’t listen. _ You could be hanging out with the guy who likes you no matter what you’re like. _

The food bit is disgusting but he can’t fault himself for eating. Well, not the things he needs to survive (though look where that gets ya, in the end). He doesn’t exactly need to see something that he knows he will: himself, putting a scorpion back together with his teeth. Though it is all for a good cause. Every bit of acrid sick that’s forced back up into his throat. Every embarrassing punchline preceding Link’s unintentional, revealing jokes. Everything he’s doing on this doggone show. Rhett’s laughter rings in the studio just as it always did, boisterous, rewound but unscathed—even time dare not touch it. 

Moments ignored blur together and pass quick. He only sees Rhett, because Rhett’s all he wants to see.

They’re probably buried by now, Link reckons, and hopes it’s close together. 

* * *

He’s force-fed with moments when he’d made it the hardest for himself, but he wouldn’t have it any other way. Lowkey in a mood to self-harm and wallow, he incurs abrasive memories on purpose, for those are also the best ones. 

He wouldn’t have recognised this moment, maybe, if Rhett hadn’t repeated the profession. Link had been trying so hard to tune him out then, for whatever reason. Some rules he’s had constructed for himself, by God and the rest of them.

_ “.uoy rof eid dluow I” _

_ I love you, _ Link thinks, ruined by how much he’s wronged the man who loved him unconditionally. _ I love you, _and he’s besotted, though he doesn’t really get it around the time Rhett unclaims a star for him. He’s never gone with Rhett so that he could show him, and now he’ll never see it, Linkstar lost in the asterisms as much as Link himself is.

He presses a kiss to the acrylic after Rhett meets him for another, and then Rhett warbles about kissing him as he moves away. 

When it’s dark, it’s darker. He’s trapped in his sleeping body to mull over every moment.

Endless _ I love you, I love you, I’m in love with you; _ until what’s left of his existence hurts. Every time he should have said it, and then some.

The songs are still catchy, Rhett’s voice still as beautiful. All the ways Link has had the privilege of seeing him repeat in this death knell—and each time Link sees him, he’s overcome with such love that he fears a second death.

Link is annoyed with his genteel self most when Rhett drives. They traverse the distance back to their home, and he sits in the van, bereft and trying to will himself to urge Rhett to pull over, so that Link could distract him in ways less regrettable.

The chia unwilts, becomes greener and gentler, etiolated and infant, retracting into the head of the alderman. 

In the most terrible part of this rewind, he’s not seeing Rhett as often, comforted only by the knowledge that it doesn’t last long. It’s like he’s moving through dark molasses, though in the motes of time he’s present for it, he sees his body going about his life and his wife genially. 

Sitting with Rhett after they unplan a morning show, he’s preoccupied with worry that he doesn’t have much time left with him, and suddenly every second he’s not looking at Rhett is outrageous. Link knows he can’t wrest his obstinate body, but that doesn’t stop him carping at it: 

Look at Rhett. 

Look at Rhett. 

Look at Rhett, doofus. 

_ Look at him. _

And then he does, surprising himself. 

Sitting at the other end of the room with his coffee, Rhett’s just plain enough to make Link want to keen. 

Then Rhett looks over at him, meets his eyes. It’s the first time Link agrees with his gormless body, which has a breath to suspend where Link can only think of being breathless. In the protracted moment, it’s as if Rhett’s looking straight at _ him. _ It’s as if he’s saying that wherever Link goes, he’ll find him.

* * *

He’s unadopted a dog, unmarried, sated with the hope that his family goes on without him fine in some other life. Rhett’s still there, but the moments until he’s living with him pass hard.

Link finds himself walking back into more than one fight. In this infinite about-face, fights bring them further apart. Hilarious—in a way that makes Link want to weep. That’s what he gets, in death; because in life Rhett only loved him more after each fight. 

Each touch—no matter how casual—burns again when retracted.

He’d wanted to touch Rhett more deliberately, always, but reckoned it would have been the final nail in the coffin for everything else in his life. There would have been nothing to do after, say, _ kissing _Rhett, but go crazy or die. It took the worse of the two for Link to realise he was taking himself a little too seriously. 

Link watches Rhett lose hair at his cheeks, watches the lines of his face smooth out. He’s always beautiful, but Link had forgotten how lively youth makes him. 

When Rhett’s mole is visible, the regret at not kissing him is made harder to deal with. In a young body, Link thinks with a younger mind—not yet barbed with years of suppressing his feelings.

Link isn’t sure how time moves except too fast, and no matter how much he tries to dig his heels into the ground, moments disappear again. It’s getting difficult to remember what came before, or after—and then Link makes perfect sense of it. 

His body is living with Rhett, and he wants to be there too, would give anything for it, even if he has to unknow everything else, including their future. 

Apparently even in Hell they allow for wishes.

  


* * *

  


They cover acreage of memories yet unmapped, drive back to their homes before getting lost somewhere with Merle drawling counter-clockwise. 

Fire spits out logs, soot-streaked then unblemished, before it dies down with the touch of Rhett’s match. Link spits strawberry wine back into the bottle. Sits with Rhett as it unbrews, as Rhett grows farther from him. 

Rhett gets together with exes. 

Link feels like there’s something he’s forgetting. He feels bad, at times, like he needs to spend each moment alongside Rhett. It’s all a little blurry in his mind, but his anxiety’s allayed by the realisation that _ duh, _ it’s natural that he’s missing someone as awesome as his best friend. Of course Link wants to be hanging out all the time, it’s the most fun anyone could ever have.

Waves curl in and glide down rocks and back into stillness. Snow goes up into the clouds. 

Link climbs out of a freezing creek after Rhett, and something goes off in him—he’s pretty sure it’s called _ deja vu, _ but it feels so real. Unlike a memory, more like a vision of the future, and _ super _ realistic. Rhett and him in freezing water, but not the creek. He knows everyone’s brain tricks them into thinking their _ deja vu _ is real, but maybe his really is. Because for a moment there he saw himself as brave enough to hold Rhett’s hand. 

  


Link returns his kisses to the girls who’d given them to him, and takes a good hard look the one time he can see Rhett doing the same. 

Evenings, as the sun comes up, he finds himself in a body unskipping merrily to the graveyard ‘cause he knows he’ll see Rhett there. 

In backmasked masses Link undoes the knowledge that his feelings for Rhett are anything but true and just. He watches Rhett’s smile reappear and disappear, as they uncrack jokes.

Di scolds them for things they haven’t even _ done! _ But then they do—and Link’s young mind is a little muddled. It passes quickly, as the bad feelings always do. 

One moment he’s in school, then he’s out. 

One moment he’s 12, then the candles come back on. 

Tucker, brown and shaggy, barks at his feet. 

Link sees his dad more often. 

He speaks to Rhett in school, meeting him for the first time after a sleepover at Link’s. 

He has this funny feeling that they’ll be good friends. 

He watches him all day, until first period. 

Link talks to his desk mate—Rhett. He’s pretty funny.

The boy moves away from Link to look around the class. 

Link forgets his name. 

* * *

  
  


There is no moment of actual grief to cause the way Link’s life flashed before his eyes. But in his sleep, there was a terror greater than death, that flashed so stark it woke him upon impact. 

Link takes some precious time to blink, then keels over slowly, his seatbelt preventing him from ending up between his own knees. His eyes are closed until he’s overwhelmed with the need to look at Rhett, and it takes him a few moments to learn how to breathe again when he does. 

“You awake?”

Rhett laughs next to him, eyes sliding to him for a moment where Link fears actual impact. 

“Link? _ Link,” _ Rhett is stern.

He’s pulling over before Link can muster the strength to plead for it. 

Link’s holding onto the door handle, his other hand undoing the seat belt. He’s only halfway out of the car when he retches, and then he steps over that puddle of his own creation and leans against the car, butt on the back door and hands on his knees.

“Link,” Rhett calls, having rounded the car to stand next to him. Link looks up at him, and Rhett puts a hand on his shoulder. “You good, man?” he asks, soft. 

Link feels like he’s never been in front of Rhett before. Rhett’s face is too close to resist.

In another death, Link knows he will look back at it like this:

_ “.tnim a deen uoY .hsoG” _

Rhett unbreaks the kiss. Rhett’s hand drops from his face, back to his shoulder. He tenses, and Link unsticks his lips. 

**Author's Note:**

> i really think i'm clever for this joke, so i'll repeat it here: how's that for the worst youtube rewind ever
> 
> This fic was inspired by Joanna Newsom music through and through. Sorry for kicking it off with a quote from “Baby Birch” which is Ms. Newsom’s most heartbreaking song and deals with topics much graver than the topics of this fic—I was just trying to get y’all in the mood.
> 
> This was entirely a self-indulgent thing, but I hope someone else found enjoyment in it! Let me know if that someone was you, and if you’re a Joanna fan or a Rhett-and-Link fan please come talk to me. (tumblr @bloodbros) <3
> 
> big ups to my real ones Bellamy and Mike for crying to this one <3 love ya! (follow them on tumblr @rhink80 and @its-mike-kapufty, if you've been missing out on that good good)
> 
> song links (the three that make me bawl most)
> 
> [baby birch](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8-Mj3wKU-wg)   
[in california](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qukojXEK2GI)   
[time, as a symptom](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KHAHgjL0YzQ)   



End file.
